Computer simulation, programming, software, technology, research, and more (since 2007)
There are some things in computing that seem “obviously” true and that “clearly” make it “impossible” to do some things. One example of this is the idea that you cannot go backwards in time from the current state of a program or computer system and recover previous state by just reversing the semantics of the … Continue reading “Microsoft REPT: You CAN Reverse from a Core Dump!”
Thanks to a tip from “Derek” on a previous blog post about a replay debugger from 1995, I was made aware of the reverse execution ability that was available in the Borland Turbo Debugger version 3.0 from 1992! This is the oldest commercial instance of “reverse” that I have found (so far), and definitely one … Continue reading “Borland Turbo Debugger – Reverse Execution in 1992”
I just found a story about Undo software that was rather interesting from a strategic perspective. “Patient capital from CIC gives ‘time travelling’ company Undo space to pivot“, from the BusinessWeekly in the UK. The article describes a change from selling to individual developers, towards selling to enterprises. This is an important business change, but … Continue reading “Undo Reverse Debugger “Pivots” to Record-Replay”
A blog post from Undo Software informed me that Microsoft has rather quietly released a reverse debugger tool for Windows programs – WinDbg with Time Travel Debug. It is available in the latest preview of WinDbg, as available through the Windows Store, for the most recent Windows 10 versions (Anniversary update or later). According to … Continue reading “A new (and old) Reverse Debugger – Microsoft WinDbg”
A new entry just showed up in the world of reverse debugging – Simulics, from German company Simulics. It does seem like the company and the tool are called the same. Simulics is a rather rare breed, the full-system-simulation-based reverse debugger. We have actually only seen a few these in history, with Simics being the … Continue reading “Simulics – A New Commercial Reverse Debugger”
Last year (2015), a paper called “Don’t Panic: Reverse Debugging of Kernel Drivers” was presented at the ESEC/FSE (European Software Engineering Conference and the ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering) conference. The paper was written by Pavel Dovgalyuk, Denis Dmitriev, and Vladimir Makarov from the Russian Academy of Sciences. It describes a … Continue reading “Reverse Debug with Hardware in the Loop”
A new record, replay, and reverse debugger has appeared, and I just had to take a look at what they do and how they do it. “rr” has been developed by the Firefox developers at Mozilla Corporation, initially for the purpose of debugging Firefox itself. Starting at a debugger from the angle of attacking a … Continue reading “rr– The Mozilla Reverse Debugger”
There is a new post at my Wind River blog, where I go back to the basics of reverse execution in Simics and what it can do. The post is not about reverse debugging, about which I have written quite a bit (see for example my series of blog posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, … Continue reading “Wind River Blog: Reverse Execution (not Debugging)”
After some discussions at the S4D conference last week, I have some additional updates to the history and technologies of reverse execution. I have found one new commercial product at a much earlier point in time, and an interesting note on memory consistency.
I am going to the S4D conference for the third year in a row. This year, I have a paper on reverse debugging, reviewing the technology, products, and history of the idea. I will probably write a longer blog post after the conference, interesting things tend to come up.
We just uploaded a short movie about reverse execution and reverse debugging to Youtube, to the Wind River official channel. In the short time available in this demo, we really only show reverse execution. Reverse debug, as I define it, is not used much at all, as explaining what goes on when you start to … Continue reading “Youtube Movie on Reverse Execution (and a small bit of Reverse Debug)”
In this final part of my series on the history of reverse debugging I will look at the products that launched around the mid-2000s and that finally made reverse debugging available in a commercially packaged product and not just research prototypes. Part one of this series provided a background on the technology and part two … Continue reading “Reverse History Part Three – Products”
This is the second post in my series on the history of reverse execution, covering various early research papers. It is clear that reverse debugging has been considered a good idea for a very long time. Sadly though, not a practical one (at the time). The idea is too obvious to be considered new. Here … Continue reading “Reverse History Part Two – Research”
For some reason, when I think of reverse execution and debugging, the sound track that goes through my head is a UK novelty hit from 1987, “Star Trekkin” by the Firm. It contains the memorable line “we’re only going forward ’cause we can’t find reverse“. To me, that sums up the history of reverse debugging … Continue reading “Reverse History Part One”
The 2023 DVCon (Design and Verification) Europe conference took place on November 14 and 15, in the traditional location of the Holiday Inn Munich City Center. This was the 10th time the conference took place, serving as an excuse for a great anniversary dinner. Also new was the addition of a research track to provide … Continue reading “DVCon Europe 2023 – 10th Anniversary Edition”